Hartlepool

No I didn’t stay up to hear the result as it happened but caught it on the Radio this morning. What a result! Jody did well for the Lib Dems, but admittedly disappointingly, not quite well enough to see the Labour vote completely collapse and a victory for the Lib Dems and Hartlepool. The strong second place shows we are now the main challengers to labour in much of the country.

The big story of the night is however the disaterous result for the Conservatives. Coming in 4th behind UKIP. This is surely a measure of how weak their credibility is and bodes well for the forthcoming general election, whenever that may be. The idea that we may be seeing the death throes of the Tory party is a nice one, but the UKIP rising to replace them, even in as a third or fourth party in parliament leaves a bitter taste. And here’s why (Thanks to Steve Guy for the link.) UKIP supporters however don’t seem to like being shown the reality of what they’ve voted for, possibly because they mistakenly assume the writer is having a go at them as well, so for that reason I wouldn’t want to be thought as lumping UKIP voters in with the party. Hopefully UKIP may well kill off the Tories just before imploding themselves.

Unfortunately it seems win or loose, some aren’t any good at either. Ian Wright was said to have given an unfortunately graceless acceptance speech, which typified his behaviour throughout the campaign. Fathers 4 justice candidate Paul Watson (who was the one who called me and Simon D from York Uni “d*******s” last Saturday) was the bad looser in that during Jody Dunn’s speech he assaulted her with some sort of purple powder. Apparently Fathers 4 Justice were demonising her during the campaign because she is a barrister in the family courts. Guacamoleville has a picture of the incident with some valid comment of its own.